How the Dominican Republic Was Ruined
Tibby note: Because a couple of radio stations put these tales on their websites, I try to adhere to their rule: If it can’t be talked about or said on the radio, the story won’t get posted. I like that rule. Sure, it’s my website, but I want you to enjoy my stories without being offended by their language. That said, I push those boundaries for the honesty of this story. I think you’ll understand.
It was a cold morning in January. Since we live in Georgia, it may have been 35 or 40 degrees. We were freezing.
Over breakfast, we discussed the possibility of going someplace warm for a few days. By noon, our travel agent had set us up at a resort in the Dominican Republic.
If you don’t have children, pets, or jobs (retired), spur of the moment vacations can happen.
We are fortunate to have a travel agent astute enough to warn us the great deal at this all-inclusive resort was due to the fact that it was brand-spanking‘ new. It’s likely, she warned, they don’t have all the kinks worked out yet.
No problem. We’re really easy travelers. Stuff happens, you roll with it.
Stuff happened. Funny stuff.
Upon entering the room – OK, it was a suite - our 19-year old host began pointing out the amenities.
A mini-bar in both the kitchen and the bedroom. Impressive. Except they were stocked with Coors Light.
“Can we get Presidente (local beer) instead?” I asked.
Holding up a can of Coors Light, he said, “This is Presidente, I think. Just a different style.”
No, buddy, that’s a can of Coors Light.
And since it probably came from the brewery closest to the Dominican Republic, I’m guessing it’s been imported all the way from Albany, Georgia.
But hey, he’s 19, and it’s possible he saw Presidente and Coors Light coming off the same truck from a distributor. He gets a pass on this one.
By the way, Albany, Georgia, has some rocks but is not in the Rockies.
Day two:
“Have you gotten your free welcome gift?”
No, we hadn’t. But we know this routine. Your free welcome gift comes after you attend a meeting pitching ‘membership’ in the resort’s brand.
Also known as timeshares.
Timeshares are fine for a particular type of vacationer, but we’re wanderers and not a good fit. So, we have learned how to say no politely but convincingly.
These guys were not (immediately) taking no for an answer and proceeded to point out that our gift would contain several bottles of local goodies: liqueur, vanilla, etc.
Because of the language barrier, it took a little time to get across to them that we don’t check luggage when we fly. We travel with carry-on bags only. There was no way we could take those bottles on the plane. Especially that 750 ml bottle of liqueur.
“Is no problem,” one explained. “You wrap it up in your dirty clothes and sneak it on.”
Hello! All these years of travel, and all I had to do to fool the x-ray machines was to wrap stuff up in my dirty clothes? I am such a dummy!
The IRS should let me write the trip off as an educational expense.
Speaking of educational experiences, boy, did we ever get one from a young group of fellow Georgians that set up camp next to us at a pool one day.
Keep in mind, it’s an all-inclusive resort. Drinks are free. As the liquor flowed, so did the conversation.
We heard about everything: trucks, tractors, favorite menu items at Burger King. It was all good.
Until someone got stung by a wasp.
Faye wasn’t the one that got stung, but it turns out, she’s had the worst recent experience because she’s allergic to bee stings.
“It caught me right on the back of my thigh, and it swelled up my leg from my knee all the way up.”
A girlfriend encouraged her to give out all of the details. “Tell ‘em about your butthole, Faye.”
“Aw, yeah, my butthole swole up something awful. It was a mess.”
Thanks, Faye. Thanks for the memories.
It's Halftime! Sombody Sing!
College football is my favorite sport. Our favorite sport. In this house, we default to college football regardless of who’s playing. That our favorite team was in the national championship game was huge.
We were glued to the TV for the night.
Entertainment at halftime had been announced: Kendrick Lama.
Cool.
Now, the sum total of my knowledge of Kendrick Lamar is that I have read he is Taylor Swift’s favorite rapper. While that little nugget didn’t make me inclined to rush out and buy his music, she seems to have pop culture figured out pretty well. I’m thinking Mr. Lamar must have something going for him.
Was I ready to rap at halftime? Ehhh… we’d see.
For all the years I spent on the radio, playing country music, then pop music, I was never exposed to much rap music, and from what little I heard of the genre, it didn’t appeal to me.
I understand. I’m an older white male, and as we would say in radio: you are not the intended audience, sir.
But I was interested in seeing and hearing what Kendrick Lamar was all about. I certainly wasn’t turning off the game off, so it really didn’t matter who the halftime entertainment was, I would hear it.
Who knows? Perhaps I’d like it.
To say that I didn’t care for Kendrick Lamar’s performance isn’t really fair. I didn’t give it much of a chance. For whatever opportunity I wanted to give myself to be exposed to something new, there are words associated with Kendrick’s music (and as an older white dude, I’d say words associated with rap music in general) that I’m simply not going to relate to.
Like ‘pimp’. And ‘gangsta.’
Yes, I know what they mean in a literal sense, but when I see Kendrick’s album, To Pimp A Butterfly, I doubt is has anything to do with him sending out a butterfly to sit on a flower, then bring him some money.
Still, it doesn’t really matter what the context is, those words are simply unrelatable for me.
That halftime show did bring me some enjoyment, but it came from all the buzz on my social media feed about Kendrick’s performance. Keeping in mind that people you are ‘friends’ with on social media are likely to be your peers, the halftime show was not at all a popular choice.
“Who decided we needed rap music at halftime?”
“Who chose this guy?”
“Is it a requirement that to sing rap music you have to grab your crotch?”
Hey, I can answer that last question by asking a question a young black person might have about country music. “Is it a requirement that popular country songs mention trucks?”
The cultural divide is wide. Sometimes miles wide. It can be amusing.
I spent my professional career in pop culture, hearing the music, watching entertainers, seeing the ebb and flow of trends. I can tell you I don’t get the crotch-grab just like I don’t get me and Lou Ellen driving my truck into the cornfield and dancing to the radio until dawn.
Given the choice, though, you know I’d be shuckin’ corn with Lou Ellen.
Trucks, gangstas, beers, Moscato… we all have our relatables.
As I read comments on Kendrick Lamar’s performance and factored in my own thoughts, it occurred to me I had become my grandpa. So had a lot of other people.
“They need to cut their hair. And those loud guitars… That’s just not real music.”
My grandfather never quite got The Beatles.
The Pecan Pie Problem
I’m not sure when ‘The Season’ begins.
Is it Thanksgiving into Christmas, then into New Years? Or do we back it up to Halloween? Halloween into Thanksgiving into Christmas into New Years?
And why do we say ‘new years’ like there are several of them?
All I know is I eat a lot in ‘The Season.’
I’ve made pecan pies before, but making them this year was different. For some reason, this year I paid attention to what actually goes into making a pecan pie.
It may be because I’m trying (in vain) to reverse the slow trend of becoming a slightly larger person every year. I’m still trying to get my brain wrapped around this notion that what I put in my mouth has some direct correlation to the size of my midsection.
So... pecan pie:
-syrup
-sugar
That’s your pie: liquid sugar, granular sugar.
The sugars need something to hold them together, so let’s toss in a few eggs.
Of course there are pecans, but it could be anything. Want a peanut pie? Walnut pie? Use dill chips and it becomes a pickle pie.
The point is, we’ve named the pecan pie not after the main ingredients but after the only healthy ingredient in the thing. Rightfully, it should be called a sugar pie.
“Oh, you’re making sugar pies for the holidays? Do you do anything special?”
“Well, I like to top mine off with pecans. Adds a little crunch to the sugar.”
Years ago, I made a ‘dark’ version of pecan pie. Instead of a light corn syrup, I used molasses. Instead of white sugar, I used dark brown sugar.
I called it Pecan Mud Pie. I should have called it Pootie Pie. It hung around for days in unfavorable ways.
Pecan pie is hard to turn down, especially if you know the reputation of the person or restaurant that is offering it. Once you become known for making a good pecan pie, you are considered an excellent cook for anything else you make.
You could prepare an entire meal from canned food, nuke it in the microwave and serve it on plastic plates, and it would be the best meal ever.
Because we’re all just waiting on your delicious pecan pie at the end of the meal.
My pies this year were a failure. While they looked good coming out of the oven, apparently, I did something wrong. Serving them was serving a soupy, syrupy mess. With pecans.
They had good pecan pie flavor and got eaten (with spoons), but I doubt I will be asked to make them again for the family gathering.
I’m OK with that.
Maybe it’s just to discourage myself from eating something that will only make me a little rounder in the middle, but next time I’m serving pecan pie, I’m gonna call it like I see it.
“Alright now, I’m serving diabetes for dessert. Who wants Cool Whip on theirs?”
Mouthful of Nasty
Kids like gross. Always have. Toy makers know this and have been delivering gross toys for decades.
Garbage Pail Kids, Burp Balls, Queasy Bake Oven…. do a search for ‘gross toys’ and you’ll find not only the toys currently vying for your kids’ attention, you may also find what appealed to you as a child.
Anyone remember making creepy crawlers? Then eating them?
Seems like Santa Claus himself brought that one to my childhood house.
With no children of our own, our home these days is generally gross-free. (Pay no attention to anything my wife might say about me and Mexican food.)
But kids occasionally show up, and the ones we see most frequently know my wife and I are gamers. Ping pong, basketball, board games… we’re usually all in for whatever challenge gets thrown at us.
And that brings us to Bean Boozled.
For those not familiar with this game, allow me to introduce you. I’ll call it a board game but if it has a board, I’ve never seen it.
It does have a spinner. And jelly beans. What could go wrong?
The rules, as explained to us by the kids, are simple: Flick the spinner and whatever color it lands on, you eat a jelly bean of corresponding color.
That’s it. You now know how to play Bean Boozled. When you eat up all the jelly beans, refill bags are available at places like Cracker Barrel. That’s how wholesome the game is.
Except…
Each color jelly bean can have one of two flavors. One of those flavors is tasty; the other, not so much.
That brown jelly bean might indeed taste like chocolate pudding. But it might taste like canned dog food. The white jelly bean? Could be coconut, could be sour milk.
I will attest that while I don’t really know what some of the gross flavors taste like (slimy socks?), they’ve done a pretty good job with replicating the taste of sour milk!
My wife and I weren’t the only adult players, but we hung in there longer than the others. One of them got a booger-flavored bean and dropped out immediately. My wife grabbed a trash can after her first bad bean. She was willing to keep going but prepared to unload any further undesirable flavors.
She didn’t last long.
I became a case study for stupidity. Not only did I hang in there until I had tasted all the flavors, good and bad, but when asked to play again the next night, I agreed.
My wife declined. So did the friend who went down on his first bean. “Tasted boogers all night,” was his excuse.
Nasty.
Which of course is why kids love it.
A Word For New Moms
Let’s jump right in.
Today’s gripe: Moms who put bows on their babies’ heads.
Random baby whose mom put her picture on the internet.
I seriously don’t get this. Every single girl child that pops up on my social media feed has a bow on her head. What’s going on here? Trying to make your baby look like… Dumbo? Minnie Mouse? A rabbit?
I have a niece claiming that just as with big hair, the bigger the bow, the closer to Jesus.
Yeah, we say that in that South, but it’s only because bad style needs an excuse, if you ask me.
A random baby that may or may not be family.
Not only is this a silly trend, some of y’all have pretty rotten tastes in bows.*
Somebody needed to say that.
What you see in those pictures is your little angel looking so precious. What I see is trouble looming. So let me just go ahead and prepare you for the conversation your surly teenage daughter is going to have with you in about 17 years:
“Can I ask why you ruined all my baby pictures by wrapping my head up like you were going to give it away for Christmas?”
“Can I get a tattoo? What do mean, you think it will make me look silly? Didn’t seem to bother you when I was a baby.”
“What’s with that bow? Had Wal-Mart run out of pretty ones or was Dollar General having a sale?”
I have another question. All of the babies I see have known fathers. Where are the fathers? Why are the dads not stepping up and saying something?
Be a man! Assert yourself! Or at least claim half ownership of rights to decorating the baby’s head and take the bow off.
I’ve never had children but I can assure you if my wife wanted to put a bow on Dumpling’s head, we’d be striking a deal. "Sure, you can put a bow on her head if I never have to do poopy-diaper duty again for the rest of eternity."
Something like that. I’m a b-a-a-a-d man!
Oh, I can feel your eyes rolling, moms. I know what you’re thinking.
‘Grumpy old man.’
But I know what you’re really doing. You’re trying to mask your baby’s fat head.
Look, that’s just the facts of life. Most babies’ heads are too big for their bodies when they are born. What happened to just saying a ‘bless her heart’ and knowing she would grow into it eventually?
Has anyone considered that a fat-headed baby with a bow only makes fat-headed baby’s head look bigger?
Moms, trust me on this. Do your baby a favor. Buck the trend.
#saynotothebow (You can steal that; I stole your baby’s picture.)
No need to thank me. Just doing what I can to make you a better parent. Heaven knows, y’all need help.
There are acceptable occasions for 'bowing' the baby, though I'm saddened that this Georgia mom didn't know the 'G' was upside down.
*No specific accusations are intended for the babies pictured in this story. Although if the shoe fits…
The Eclipse: Just Add Water
It was something, the eclipse.
Especially to be in the path of totality where the moon would completely block the sun for a few moments.
The stars had aligned for us. And we were ready.
Plans had been in the works for months. One neighbor had ripped off some images from the internet and designed t-shirts celebrating the event. Another neighbor had purchased moonpies and sun chips for snacks.
There was beer.
About the only issue facing us was where to see it. In our area, watching the eclipse start to finish would take about 3 hours and options on where to see the sky for that amount of time were limited.
The few houses that make up our community are in a deep valley, heavily wooded, and a lot of the neighborhood only gets sunshine filtered through the oaks, maples and tall white pine trees surrounding us.
The day before the eclipse, several neighbors wandered up and down the lone dirt road that connects us and determined that the cabin on the end offered the best viewing from both the lower porch and in river itself. Sitting in the river is where many of us wanted to be.
More planning. A small tree would be harvested. It would be wedged between the rocks in the river so that floats could be attached. Further, the river was shallow enough at this spot that chairs could be put in the water.
Bonus: this cabin had a refrigerator in the basement. Those sitting on the porch didn’t have to walk very far to fetch and toss beers to those in the water.
The neck on this event was getting redder by the minute.
Everything went exactly according to plan. The sky was blue, the day was warm, the water was cool. And man, down in our valley where we have limited sunshine to begin with, when totality came, it got dark!
Perfect.
Except…
Many had gathered in the water a good hour or so prior to the start of the eclipse. The event had come and gone, and people were still in the water. Happy people, lounging in their chairs and tubes.
And there was beer.
We were into about the 4th hour of the party when someone just had to point out that no one had taken a bathroom break.
Here we are, lined up one behind the other in the water, and no one had stood up and announced that they would ‘be right back.’ No one had left the water to ‘take a break.’ We just sat in the river.
And there was beer.
These things go unspoken. Or should. But when someone speaks of it, smiles turn to sneers. Suspicious eyes are cast to everyone around.
Further, in the last couple of hours two pairs of those cheap eclipse-viewing glasses had come floating by us, meaning someone we could not see was upstream from us. At least two people, based on the number of glasses.
Were they also in the water? Did they also have beer? These are questions best unanswered.
But the subject had been broached. Resolution became necessary.
In the end, we all agreed none of us would never do anything like that. Despite being older men and women, our friendship was strong and our bladders stronger.
Everything’s cool, everything’s OK.
One day, when you and your children are visiting the loveliest place on God’s earth you’ve ever seen, and you happen upon a pristine little trout stream, gurgling its way over the rocks, tumbling merrily to a larger river somewhere, and Little Precious looks up at you and asks, “Can I take a drink from it?”
Don’t be my dad.
My dad said, “Sure. Why not?”
Myself or Someone Like Me: The Avatar
When you’re 14, you’re never going to be old. Until one day you are.
When you get older, the best you can hope for is to be cool - the cool mom or dad, the cool aunt or uncle - and hope the young'uns around you see Rico Suave instead of Ricky Ricardo (who would have turned 100 this year).
That’s not the way it works, of course, but it’s really all most of us have to hang a hat on. That and our increasingly shiny heads.
Part of the perception of cool in this digital world is the ability to keep up with the latest ‘thing.’ Or at least to be perceived as trying to keep up.
So, when my teenage companions suggested I needed to be on Snapchat, I surrendered my phone.
“Set it up.”
If you’re not familiar with Snapchat, my best and shortest description would be that it’s texting with pictures.
There’s so much more to it, but that’s the basic function.
Further, unless you make a special effort to save a Snapchat, it disappears for good, typically after 10 seconds. There is a lot to like about that, especially if you are fond of sharing pictures of you doing stupid or illegal things (I’m guessing).
I suppose it’s because your chats disappear the Snapchat logo is a ghost.
The ghost is actually a blank canvas. You can insert a photo of you or anything else in that space. I had chosen to do nothing, and it was not sitting well with the 16-year old beside me.
She suggested I needed an avatar. In digital-speak, an avatar is a digital representative of you.
Think of it as a personal emoji.
For example, take your basic smiley face emoji 😊. Now, give Smiley Face some of your features, like the same color hair, that same skin tone, your dimples, glasses, if you wear them, etc.
You’re basically creating a cartoon character in your likeness.
You bet there’s an app for that. Several, probably.
Let the games begin.
She would look at me, then look at her options for designing me. “You need a longer face,” she commented as she picked a template to make that happen.
“His nose isn’t long enough,” her brother offered, thus involving himself in the process.
It started getting personal. Really personal.
My wrinkles were discussed. Scars and moles were talked about. And I guess I had bloodshot eyes that day because the question, ‘can you make the whites of his eyes red?’ was asked.
Assigning my avatar white hair was a no-brainer, but they argued over which available option looked most like a guy going bald.
Ultimately, my avatar was finished. It's not easy seeing yourself through the eyes of a teenager, but I wasn’t too disappointed. Given that they were only creating my face, I avoided some other pitfalls common to men of a certain age:
-pot belly
-corroded toenails
-ear hair
-nose hair
-turkey neck
-baggy pants (‘cuz you got no butt)
I thought I got off pretty easy. The 14-year old thought his sister could have done a better job around my eyes.
“He’s got some pretty gnarly eyebrows.”
I do. And he will too one day. As we’re all fond of saying: There’s only one option to getting older, and you ain’t gonna like it much.
But I’m good with where I am in life. And I'm keeping busy by working on my own app, inspired by Snapchat. Since it will only work on teenagers, its working name is Teenzap.
Here's how it will work: use the app to take a photo of any teenager, and in 10 seconds, they will disappear.
Not the photo. In fact, you may want to keep the photo. It will be all that remains of that precious pimply face.
I'll keep you posted.
The Great Kitchen Catastrophe
It’s a very special smehell. I made that word up. It's a cross between 'smell' and 'hell.'
We need a new word describing what it’s like walking into your house after your refrigerator/freezer has died and been left alone. Putrid, nauseous, toxic, oh my god, and liquid death don't get it done.
Who knows how long it had been dead. It had been two weeks since we had been around.
Neighbors discovered the problem. Ours is a close-knit community; everyone knows where everyone else keeps a spare key. If you don’t have something you need but your neighbor does, go get it. That’s how this started.
I received a text that someone or something was dead in our house. “It’s not bad,” she wrote. “It’s really, really bad.”
She could have – I think I probably would have – just walked out and left it for the homeowner to figure out what was wrong. Instead, she and her husband decided to do a little investigating.
“Sniff the shower drain,” I suggested, thinking the septic tank might have a problem. By the way, you want to be pretty good friends with folks you suggest to go into your shower and sniff your drain. Profanities could follow.
Looking for any obvious problems led them to eventually opening the refrigerator door. And immediately slamming it shut. It was a morgue in there.
Actually, no. There was life.
You know how your fridge has little vents? When motors aren't running and coolants aren't cooling, those vents become doorways for small creatures, hungry for a meal of spoiled, rotting food.
There were bugs.
Among the damage, a sealed pack of chicken that had swollen up and burst through the packaging. Same for the venison. Packs of ground deer meat had all breached the seals of their vacuum-packed plastic, warming to room temperature, oozing blood.
Yogurt had burst the seals of their individual cups and grown hair. Whomp buscuits – those you whomp against the counter to open - had broken through without being whomped and were molding.
And the bugs. It may have smelled like death, but certain unidentified insects were loving life: crawling, flying and feasting.
Clearly, the refrigerator had not just conked out yesterday. Alien life forms of this magnitude take time to manifest.
Public service announcement: Frozen okra will thaw into a gooey mess but will not explode through freezer bags. I’m not sure why you need that information, but now you have it.
Hazmat was called but refused to respond. So, friends stepped in to do what friends must occasionally do. Once in a while, you gotta step up to the plate.
First, all windows were opened. They found of couple of fans in our house, then brought a couple more of their own to prop up in those windows.
This cancelled the plans of our immediate next-door neighbors to eat lunch out on their deck that day. While they are a good 30 yards away, the stench from our kitchen was uncontainable. Those folks had other options of where they could be, so they packed up and left.
Like I said, it’s a real special odor.
Neighbors from both sides of the house came with garbage bags, willing to help clean out the fridge. While tossing out our food, one of them tossed his own cookies. Fortunately, he managed to make it outside, hanging his head out over the deck railing before that happened.
Ten full garbage bags and $5 later, the offending mess was deposited in the local dump.
The same friend who had lost his lunch cleaning out the refrigerator was around when we finally arrived two days later, offering to help me move the refrigerator out of the house. To fortify ourselves, we both took a shot of tequila. (We do a fair amount of fortifying around here.)
During the process of rolling it out on a hand truck, one of the fridge doors popped open. His tequila shot left his body as quickly as it had entered.
We refortified.
Eventually, we were able to wheel the refrigerator into my neighbor’s yard. The same neighbors that had left. Their yard. I used their hose, their water, to wash out meat juice and mold. Can’t wait for them to return. Precious memories aren’t the only things that linger.
The fridge made nice yard art, and we considered just leaving it there.
Back inside, my wife Beverly wiped down every counter and cabinet with all manner of cleaning solutions, going so far as to take down the curtains and wash them. Floors were mopped. Disinfectant was sprayed on the furniture. Plates, glasses, silverware, every pot and every pan got washed.
In tossing out all of the spoils of the refrigerator, the neighbors had left glass and canned items. Without much hesitation, we made the decision to toss everything that smehell had touched and start over.
Everything except the beer. It’s good beer, and the cans had not popped opened. I deemed them salvageable and safe.
Now, you could argue that beer which has been refrigerated, then brought back to room temperature, then refrigerated again will lose some flavor. You’d need to argue with someone else. My palate won’t notice, and I ain’t listening.
You could also argue, as my buddy did, beer cans that have been in such close proximity to the funk of rotting deer carcasses are contaminated and need to be replaced. But again, my ears don’t hear.
Those cans have taken a gentle bleach bath and are now chillin’ in a brand new refrigerator.
My friend has vowed not to accept my offer of a beer for the next year. Beverly has vowed that lips that touch those cans of beer will not touch hers for about the same period of time.
Don’t tell me I don’t know what it means to sacrifice.
I (Mostly) Don't Heart The 80s
I don’t even know what the commercial on TV is advertising. I only know it has Taylor Dayne’s ‘Tell It To My Heart’ as its background music. It’s a song you can still hear on the radio.
I hate that song.
I don’t hate Taylor Dayne. Good on her for singing an enduring song. I don’t hate the people that wrote it. Good on them for still having an income stream from all the radio stations that still play the stupid song. The TV commercial also provides them royalties.
Wikipedia says the songwriters almost didn’t submit the tune for publishing, thinking it wasn’t all that good. I wish they had stuck with that plan. Thirty years later, it’s still wrecking my eardrums.
Having spent my entire career playing music on the radio, it’s always fascinated me which songs become enduring ‘classics’ and which songs disappear from airplay.
Let’s take any song from Celine Dion. Yes, she’s a 90s artist but a good example of the point I’m trying to make. In the 90s, Celine was all that, putting 21 songs on the Billboard charts. Four of those songs went to #1. Celine reached that pinnacle of getting air time on just about anything she put out. Honestly, I think she could have belched, put it to music, and it would have been a hit.
My personal favorite was “The Power of Love” which spent 4 weeks at #1. Where is it now?
Nowhere. That’s where it is.
How about the song from Titanic, “My Heart Will Go On?” Huge hit, as was the movie. Ever hear it on the radio anymore?
Look, I’m not here to advocate for Celine Dion. Personally, I own none of her music, and I don’t miss hearing the theme from Titanic on the radio. It’s just a curiosity as to how certain songs live on while others, arguably better, do not.
Let me ask you this: is ‘Tell It To My Heart’ a better song than Wang Chung’s ‘Dance Hall Days?’ Where is that song? It’s weird, inexplicable, and perhaps creepy lyrics are way more fun than ‘Tell It To My Heart’. Plus, it’s just as danceable.
Further, ‘Dance Hall Days’ can be heard in twelve movies, including Pretty In Pink. It’s also made a few TV appearances, including Breaking Bad and The Middle. It’s almost a quintessential 80s song, but you never hear it.
Another example: Rick Astley. ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ was a huge song, a world-wide #1. Google up the top songs from 1987 and there’s a bunch of ‘em you still hear. But none of them are Rick Astley.
From my days in pop radio, I know people (women, in particular) love the 80s. Still. Not me. Aside from a couple of her tunes, I thought Madonna songs stunk. Lyrically, most were pointless, just something to sing over a dance beat.
As my radio days were winding down, my morning show partner asked me if there was anything I would not miss. My answer was swift: I will never, ever, ever in the history of the universe listen to The Human League’s, ‘Don’t You Want Me.’ I will no longer have to play it, and I will never hear it again. Like ever.
My ears are tainted because of it.
Aaack! I said, “tainted.” ‘Tainted Love’ is another song for which I cannot understand the everlasting appeal. A wretched piece of pop junk.
I still love and listen to my old station, but when that song comes on, I take a break. That’s a polite way of saying I turn off the radio, stop the car, disconnect the battery, siphon out the gas, break out the windows, slash the tires, pour the gas on the car and set it ablaze.
A fiery exorcism of sorts.
But I know the reason both songs are still on the radio is that they test well. Meaning, people still enjoy hearing them.
Music is subjective. You like what you like, and sometimes there is no rhyme or reason as to why certain songs resonate. But if I’m a company executive in charge of my firm’s advertising and you bring me ‘Tell It To My Heart’ as my commercial’s background, I’m gonna Donald Trump you.
“You’re fired.”
If you suggest ‘Tainted Love,’ take cover. After I fire you, I may fire at you.
I Can Barely Bear Seeing A Bare Bear
Our bartender was Romanian but spoke pretty good English. Since he was working for a cruise line that caters to a mostly English-speaking clientele, good English was a prerequisite of the job, I reckoned.
“Can you speak French?” he was asked.
As the boat that employs him cruises the rivers of France, that was a fair question.
“No,” he answered. “I speak Romanian, Russian and English. That’s enough!” Then he laughed. “Do you know how hard it is to speak English? You have over 300,000 words!”
Whether that’s true or not, I’ve always thought what makes English difficult, even for those of us that have spoken it all our lives, is the way words sound the same yet are spelled differently (see my title), or that the exact same word can have different meanings (see my title).
In fact, once you read the rest of this tale, you can tell everyone you’ve read it.
But let’s move this conversation back to the barstool, because someone has just mentioned they had read that the most difficult word in the English language is…
RUN.
Eyebrows immediately furrowed in doubt.
Run? Really?
So, we decided to run it up the flagpole and see if we had indeed run into the toughest word in the English-speaking world.
Immediately, it was evident there are many ways to use ‘run’ that didn’t involve using your legs to move quickly from on point to another.
You run water either to run the washer or run a bath. If it’s the washer, then you gotta run the dryer.
The refrigerator runs. Let’s just hope we catch it before it gets too far away! (In today’s techno- world, you may have to explain what a prank call was to your kids or grandkids. I doubt they’ll immediately get the concept of dialing a random number and asking whomever answered if their refrigerator was running.)
We run the vacuum to clean the room, unless we’ve run out of time. Or run out of room.
We run our mouths. Too much.
We run for office. If we don’t run into our scandalous past, well, we’ve run a good campaign, I guess, so we can run for reelection.
Our watches run.
Our cars run so that we can run to the store. Just don’t let the parking meter run out while you’re inside or you run the risk of a ticket.
You’ve got a run in your pantyhose, by the way.
Had enough?
Me, too.
Perhaps ‘run’ is all the problem it’s purported to be. Regardless, I’ve run out of easy examples.
Besides, I need to run to the bathroom. For that, I will use my legs to move quickly from one point to another.
Hopefully, we have not run out of tissue.
Hacked!!
See me naked.
That’s not an offer. It’s the user name for the person that hacked my Instagram account.
So, it’s actually one word: seemenaked.
I suppose that could be read as 'see men aked', but I'm guessing not.
I had been on Instagram one whole week, my account set up by my 15- and 11-year old nieces who convinced me it was time to step up my social media game. As simple as Instagram is, I don’t think I’m smart enough to have figured it out on my own.
I took my first photo with Instagram and immediately got a few responses, a few followers. A very large part of the allure of social media is amassing followers.
Lake Jordan, Titus, AL
Pretty cool, I thought. Very soon, millions would be seeing the world through my eyes.
Turns out, I wasn’t having much success. After a week on Instagram, I had fewer followers than Jesus had disciples.
That raises questions as to why anyone would want to hack my account.
Luckily, I was with my 19-year old cousin, Hannah, when my Instagram account started blowing up. Since the invention of the VCR, every adult has known when you have a problem involving tech, you need kids around to figure it out.
My screen started filling up with requests to follow me, some in languages I did not know. Almost immediately, the request to follow me was followed by them accepting a request for me to follow them. Except I never made any such requests.
I showed the screen to Hannah. “What’s going on?”
She grabbed my phone. “You’ve been hacked. Someone calling themselves ‘seemenaked.”
I tried to get my phone back, reminding her I had spent my entire career in radio. That automatically makes me a journalist. And if I’m a journalist, shouldn’t I investigate? I mean, if ‘seemenaked’ has hijacked my account, shouldn’t I at least check her out? Click on a few pictures to see if she's someone I know.
(I’m assuming it was a ‘she’ because the profile picture was a young woman’s smiling face. I do realize that means nothing on social media, but again… investigative journalist…. we investigate stuff….)
“No,” says Hannah, as her thumbs started hammering on my phone screen.
“What’s your password?” she asked.
I shrugged.
She continued working. Working and mumbling.
“I need your password.”
Can’t help you.
“We may have to delete your account.”
Great. One and done on Instagram.
That evening, a text arrives from a former radio partner. The catty language of her text told me she was amused. She had received a solicitation to follow me on Instagram with an enticing photo attached.
Make that, partially enticing. It was a collage of photos that included one of me and my wife.
Enjoy hours of fun trying to figure out which one is different from the others!
I’m scratching my head on this. If you receive such a photo that appears to have come from me, what are you supposed to think? That I’ve posted some ‘then and now’ photos of my wife? That the Kardashians spend time at our house? That we have a secret life we're finally letting you in on?
Seriously, what?
Hanna swung back into action. After another half-hour of working, she eventually handed the phone back to me, declaring my account free from the intruder.
So she thought.
The next day, I received a notice from Instagram telling me that my account was now associated with another email address. And the new email ends not with .com but with .ru.
Russia! So that’s it!
Not only had the Russians hacked my account, they had used Russian babes to do it. (See how this investigative journalist thing works?)
My profile picture had also been changed. No longer was it the face of a 60-something year old white guy, it was now a nicely-tanned, round booty in a thong. And since it was not a flat, almost non-existent booty, I knew it wasn't my mine.
Disgust set in. Replacing my face with a butt - even a really cute one - was taking things a little too far.
So, I’ve decided to take matters into my own hands. I’m heading to Russia to track down every one of these ne’er-do-wells. That’s right, I still have the picture of them on my phone (for investigative purposes only, of course), so I know what they look like.
And when I find them, boy, am I going to give them a good talking-to (possibly, over drinks).
I especially want to track down ‘seemenaked.’ I’m thinking I may just take off all my clothes and let her see me naked.
If that doesn’t convince her to change her hacker ways, nothing will.
The Right Reverend Tibby
Boy, I didn’t see this one coming
Hanging up the phone after talking with our niece, my wife turned to me and said, “She wants to know if you’d officiate her wedding.”
Do what?
“She wants me to marry them?” I asked.
Yup. That’s what she wanted.
Heck, yeah, I’ll do that! Several reasons:
#1) I’ve been a part of this child’s life since she showed her sweet face to this world, so I’d probably do just about anything for her.
#2) She and her fiancé share a wonderfully quirky sense of humor. Anything that went wrong at the wedding would just be a funny memory for them. (That’s the way we should live our entire lives, I think.)
#3) - and this is where it gets selfish - I always harbored this notion that when I retired from radio, I’d become a tent revival preacher.
I’d buy a big tent, hire a couple of corn-fed gals with high hair and the voices of angels, and I’d hit the road with my own traveling salvation show.
Look out! The Right Reverend Tibby is coming to your town!
I’d pitch my big tent right next to the local Wal-Mart, set up the folding chairs, and set out my hand-painted plywood sign that says “Gospel Sing & Healing Tonight. 7 p.m.”
The heavenly voices of my gospel girls would rain down on the ears of believers, getting them in the mood to hear some good words from Reverend Tibby, who would take to the stage and whip the flock into a frenzy with a bunch of ‘amen’s and a whole lot of ‘hallelujah’s. Then we’d top off the night by beseeching the sick and afflicted to come forward for a-healing, hoisting them from the quagmire of holy dilapidation.
In my younger years, I’d watched the Rev. Ernest Angley do such work on TV. Cripples would rise up from their wheelchairs. The blind could see. And the deaf would hear.
I especially liked how he ‘healed’ the deaf. He’d stick his fingers in their ears and say, “Evil spirits come OUT!” (‘Out’ must be said in two syllables.) Then, he’d pull his fingers out and demonstrate how he’d worked his miracle.
“Say, baby,” he’d instruct.
“Baba,” they’d weakly reply.
‘Say, baby,” he’d say a little louder.
“Ba..bay.”
“Say, bay-bee!” he’d holler.
And sure enough, he’d have them saying ‘baby’ and ‘mama’ and a few other words before presenting them as free from the demons that had robbed them of their hearing.
Pass the offering plate, y’all!
I thought that might be a fun way to spend retirement.
I ran into a road block fulfilling that dream as I actually retired. That being, I was way too lazy to be preaching every night. Come 7 o’clock, I want a belly full of wine and pork chops.
But now…. now… The Right Reverend Tibby was being called on. The dream was alive!! Rev. Tibby done been asked to marry somebody. Can I get a ‘hallelujah?!’
As if the story needs to get better, it does.
This event would take place in the state of Alabama.
Of course.
Alabama is a fine state. It is. I especially like their state flag. It’s a big red ‘X.’ I always figured many years ago, the Alabama flag committee didn’t know what to put on their flag, so they decided to put the governor’s signature on it.
Where else would The Right Reverend Tibby be ask to officiate a wedding but in a state where first cousins can marry each other?
Let’s put that aside, though. Alabama or not, I needed to make sure any marriage I officiated would be legit, so I did what any right-thinking person would do: Googled it.
Turns out, in most states anyone can be the officiant. You’re basically just signing the marriage certificate as a witness the couple has ‘solemnized’ (the legal word) their relationship. Once the couple also signs it and turns it in to the court, it’s done.
Good enough. Not.
I needed more. Thankfully, more was easy to find. It’s called American Marriage Ministries, claiming almost half a million registered ‘ministers.’ Online registration was free, easy and produced a cool certificate.
By golly, I was now an officially official officiant. My chest swelled up as big as my head. I grabbed my banjo and headed out to Alabamy!
The wedding was lovely. In true Southern style, after the morning ceremony, brunch was served. Grits, bacon, eggs, biscuits and fried chicken and waffles. The only hitch, in fact, was the bacon ran out before the demand did.
(Reverend Tibby pro tip: If you’re having a Southern wedding, don’t run out of bacon.)
Before leaving Alabama, I admonished the newlyweds my reputation as a marrying minister was now on their shoulders, and they had better not let me down.
I bet that will keep them together in stormy weather. In fact, I fully expect that will keep them together through the heartbreak of reading this and finding out there was not enough bacon.
This story could very easily end with ‘happily ever after,’ but not so fast. And let me assure you, if this last piece were not true, I would make it up as a fun way to end this story. But it is true:
After the wedding, the happy couple headed out to honeymoon in Orlando.
Disney World?
Nope.
WrestleMania.
The Daylight Diet
I know it works. It said so in Reader’s Digest. (Gimme a break. I was at the home of some older relatives, and it was the only thing available for bathroom reading.)
The premise is pretty straight-forward: the body metabolizes food differently during daylight hours. To that end, if you eat all of your meals while there’s light in the sky, your tummy will evaporate and your love handles will fall off.
That’s not really the end conclusion, but it’s what I was going for.
There is some research that supports this notion.
One of the subjects of the RD article was a woman that had gained a lot of weight during pregnancy. Following the birth of her child, she had either a new job or new working hours. Regardless, because of that schedule change, she needed to eat supper by 5 each day. Then, it was off to work, arriving back home around 11 p.m.
The big change for her was that the 5 o’clock meal was not just her last meal of the day, it was her last food of the day. Upon returning home in the evening, she showered and went to bed.
The way I remember the story, she lost over seventy pounds of baby fat with just that one change. No change in her diet, only in the times she ate.
A lightbulb went off over my head, however dimly. Could this program help me lose some baby fat? In my case, baby back ribs fat.
February was about to begin. That seemed like a good starting point. New month, new plan. My wife was onboard; she thinks we eat too late, anyway.
Initially, the hardest part was that it was, in fact, the beginning of February. It gets dark early!
In order to have supper consumed by dark, it needed to be completely ready to eat by 5 o’clock. As the month wore on and the days grew longer, having the meal prepared by 6 or even 6:15 still had us finishing before dark.
There were a couple of exceptions, as there are bound to be, but I was faithful to the plan.
Thinking back to when I announced the new diet on social media, the very first question that came up was, “Does that go for liquid consumption after dark, as well???” It came from this girl I used to work with who is now a fitness queen and is trying to eat all healthy and probably assumes that I enjoy a toddy or two in the evening. Knowing her, she wanted me to fail.
I did. It didn’t work.
Oh, I lost two pounds, but I was hoping for twenty.
Now for my analysis of what might have gone wrong: liquid consumption after dark, probably. I admit, I am a man of many empty calories.
Supper may be over, and I may have finished eating before dark, but that wine bottle is still half-full. Or half-empty, depending on your point of view. From my angle, there is still some work to be done, and that article didn’t say anything about wine.
To be fair to me, I do try to limit my wine intake to two glasses.
No wine was harmed or wasted taking this photo
But then there’s the splash or two of a good bourbon over ice that soothes the soul and helps one sleep at night.
You don’t want me to not sleep well, do you?
I do want to point out one HUGE positive to this particular eating arrangement. If you have decreed that all meals must be taken during daylight hours, you have effectively made late-night snacking against the law.
That’s a really big deal for those of us that are prone to getting the munchies because that steak and potato and beans and salad and rolls and wine you had two hours ago suddenly is not enough, and you must go thrust your spoon into that jar of peanut butter… twice, maybe three times, or you will die - quite literally, die - of starvation!
(A very small half-pound sliver of cheddar cheese will also do the trick.)
This plan sets the rule: when dinner’s over, eating is done for the day. I liked that, and I stuck to it.
So, I’m going to hang with it for a while. If nothing else, I quit gaining weight. Best case, I’ll hit my target weight in 8 -10 years.
My wife has had more success than I have, but then, she has taken a month-long sabbatical from all alcohol. She suggests I do the same.
I have found that staring at her blankly, like she’s a martian (which of your 7 eyes should I be looking at?), is an effective response.
Sorry About Valentine's Day
I am friends with the anti-Christ of Valentine’s Day. Every year, he plasters his office door with cute little signs proclaiming, “St. Valentine Was Beheaded” and “Valentine’s Day is a creation of the floral industry.”
When he was a single guy, I thought it was a brilliant move. Hey, ladies, you can have this guy, but you’d best know, upfront, he ain’t spending a dime come February 14th. You’ve been warned.
There’s a politically correct version of Valentine’s Day now. Some use the date to celebrate S*A*D.
Single Awareness Day.
That’s right, celebrate your singleness. Who needs a soulmate when you have six feline friends and a house that smells like cat pee?
If you don’t live alone, though, Valentine’s Day might come with some guilt.
“What? You say you love your wife, yet you won’t spring for a few flowers or a handful of chocolates?”
On the other hand, couldn’t you – shouldn’t you - use that day as the one day out of the year you actually brought her some flowers?
There’s some conflict there.
I don’t feel an obligation, but this year I bought flowers. In fairness, it was only because we were out of ketchup. (We need ketchup, and the grocery store also sells flowers, so while I’m here…)
I also bought beer, but the beer/wine aisle is right beside the floral department. That may not be just coincidence.
I used to think buying Valentine’s Day flowers from the grocery store instead of the local florist was a complete cop-out, a version of running down to the drug store at 8 p.m. on Christmas Eve to do your Christmas shopping because it was the only place left open.
And what woman wouldn’t appreciate a bag of red and green candy corn and some toenail clippers?
Anymore, though, the grocery store is the local florist. In my neighborhood, it’s the only place left to buy flowers.
Some yellow roses caught my eye, and my wife, herself a yellow rose of Texas, prefers them to red roses, so I was in business.
In my defense, I could point out that Valentine’s Day is not the only day of the year I buy flowers, and that would be true. But it’s also true that I was buying them on that day because it was in fact Valentine’s Day, and the flowers would be the extent of any sort of recognition of the occasion.
photo source: my dining room table
What’s happened? What brought us to this? Used to be that Valentine’s Day was a day a guy might ‘get lucky,’ so any effort was worth it.
Nowadays, getting lucky is finding a quarter in the parking lot.
It’s not that time just wears us down, nor that we don’t love our mates. Those are not problems in our house, anyway. Sure, we both suffer from a lack of creative ideas, but mostly, it’s that we don’t need anything.
The whole digital shopping thing hasn’t helped. It’s hard to compete with a computer and a credit card. Anything that pops into my brain as necessary or amusing, I buy it. A couple of months ago, I got the bright idea that we needed a new knife sharpener. Hello, Amazon!
You needn’t think I’ve used it. I don’t even know where it is.
It’s good that my wife thinks the same way. I’d have never thought to buy her a lovely jar of deep tissue moisturizing cream designed especially for the neck no more than she would have thought to buy me some cacao nibs for making a steak rub.
So, there I was, waiting in the checkout line with this odd assortment of items that probably would have attracted some attention, anyway. But being Valentine’s Day, I could just feel other people gawking at my basket and thinking, ‘At least I’m not that guy.’
Or perhaps, ‘At least I’m not married to that guy.’
I have considered that Valentine’s Day occurs too close to Christmas. In our house, we really don’t do much for Christmas anymore, either. Other than eat like starving baby pigs.
Maybe I was buying the flowers out of guilt. Guilt that manifests itself as a loud booming voice screaming at me to DO SOMETHING! JUST TRY, FOR CRYIN’ OUT LOUD!
So, I formulated a Valentine’s Day poem.
Roses are red,
So are your lips.
Didn’t get you no chocolate,
It’d go straight to your hips.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to use it. Hard to beat roses, ketchup and beer.
Beg Your Pardon
Dear panhandlers:
I’m done. It’s over. Don’t ask.
Yeah, yeah, I know. No big loss for you. I don’t usually give you money, anyway.
I want you to know that it’s not that I don’t want to help. If I could know for certain you genuinely needed help, I’d buy you a burger, take you shopping, even make your house payment.
But I don’t know for certain, and frankly, I don’t believe your stories.
The carboard sign that you ‘dream of a cheeseburger, or that you’re ‘homeless with 3 children,’ just doesn’t resonate as sincere. Adding “GOD BLESS” to the bottom of your sign doesn’t make your plea more plausible, either.
I have my reasons for doubting you. I’ve seen you guys and gals take each other’s place and pass off the same cardboard sign. I’ve seen you bum a couple of bucks and walk straight into a package store.
Hey, I’m all for you enjoying a cold one, just don’t ask me to pay for it.
It’s how you’ve decided to make a living. Got it. Just doesn’t seem like you’ll ever get promoted to something better at that job.
I’ve had quite a run with some of you recently.
Back in September, passing through Memphis, I encountered a middle-aged, rather small black man as my group walked down the street.
Yes, that he was black and I am white comes into play in this particular episode.
As we walked toward the street he was ‘working,’ we could see his game. He would direct cars looking for a parking place to an open spot. That of course is something they could find on their own, but if he could run ahead of them and point it out, might there be a ‘tip’ for his help?
That appeared to be his pitch.
As we walked past him, he joined us. He was energetic and friendly, asking how we were, how we were enjoying Memphis and where we were from.
The jovial banter continued for several minutes until we were clearly getting out of his territory.
“Can you give me money for a sandwich?” he asked
My standard answer: “Sorry, man, I don’t carry money.”
That’s usually the truth. I almost never have dollar bills on me. I’m a plastic man. Credit cards. Whether it was true or not on this day made no difference. I wasn’t giving him money. I had seen him a block away and knew that if he came up to us, there would be a motive other than serving as the city’s official welcoming committee.
He responded to being turned down by immediately veering away from our group and saying, “That’s because white is always right and black is always wrong.”
I’m used to some sort of comeback when a beggar is turned down, but that one caught me off-guard. All of that friendly chit-chat suddenly became a racial divide when I didn’t give him money.
As we continued to walk away, he continued to yell, eventually hollering that if I came back to where he was, he would put me in the hospital. He said that twice.
I wondered what he was expecting by threatening me.
Seriously.
Did he think I’d stop, turn around, apologize for every historical wrong that had happened to the black man and give him a twenty? Did he think I’d suddenly sympathize with him and say, “Hey, dude, I’m not like you think. Please take my money.”
Next stop, West Coast.
Passing an older, worn out-looking gentleman on a pier in wharf district of San Francisco, I could feel it coming.
“Can you people help me get some food?”
I probably would have been better off just handing him a couple of bucks, but I gave him my standard line and kept walking. That set him off.
“Go on back to your rich-people hotel, ya faggot!”
I’m not going to lie to you. Having a homophobic slur hurled at me in the middle of San Francisco has some entertainment value. Even my gay friends have found that story amusing.
Finally, Nashville, Tennessee. It’s a city we love visiting. In fact, we have two more visits on the agenda this year.
My wife and I had taken my mother to a Christmas show at the historic Ryman Auditorium. Vince Gill and Amy Grant. It was fabulous!
As we sat in the hotel lobby the next morning eating breakfast, a young woman approached, wanting to know if she could ask us a question.
My radar lit up.
More often than not, when someone is trying to put the touch on you, it starts with, ‘can I ask you something?’ or ‘hey, mind if I ask you a question?’
She started her pitch. She and her kids didn’t have enough money to pay their hotel bill. She said she needed $26. That’s pretty specific. People doing what she was doing will usually take anything you offer.
My wife, the softest touch on earth responded, “I’d love to help.” She grabbed her pocketbook and offered to accompany the young woman to the front desk to pay her bill.
Wait for it…wait for it…
“Well, we’re not staying at this hotel,” the woman said. “We’re at a hotel down the street.”
That’s when I jumped in and, as politely as I can speak, told her, “I’m sorry, we’re not going to be able to help you.”
She stared at us for a few seconds as though we might change our minds, then moved on.
My wife excused herself from the table and went back to the room. She was aggravated, mostly with me.
It’s not that she didn’t know the woman was begging, nor that she didn’t understand why I sent the woman away. She just wanted to help. She wants to help them all. I had interfered.
Mom got weepy.
Now, Mom lives in Atlanta. She’s very familiar with the hustlers. As we talked about the incident, she even allowed how most panhandlers involve their children in their stories. She was 100% on board that the woman was out bumming, but the story made Mom really sad.
She was also sad that my wife had been so willing to help only to find out it was an obvious ruse.
So, to everyone out on the street with your hands out, I hope you have a nice day. Mostly, I hope you find the motivation to make your life better.
But you made my mama cry. We’re done.
Random Thoughts On A Not-So-Cold Winter's Morning
It’s January down south.
Even down here January is cold. Supposed to be, anyway. January is in fact our coldest month, historically.
This morning, I can’t even find the cool side of my pillow.
In a one week period, we’ve gone from freezing temperatures to planning our gardens. That's planning, not planting. It is warm, but we're not there yet.
Even if it doesn't last, welcome to our January summer.
While I’ve enjoyed playing golf in shorts for the last 3 days, I want the other January. The cold one. At least, the cold mornings.
I want the January where you wake up in the morning, slip into somebody’s hip pocket and go back to sleep. (That’s not dirty, y’all. It’s my own terminology for ‘spooning.’)
This time of year, if there’s another person in my bed, let’s get personal. If there’s a dog beside me, come a little closer. If there’s a cat on my feet, I’m surely blessed.
It’s January, it’s cold. Let’s be friends.
But it’s not cold. And a boy in his undies has just kicked off the covers.
Hey… maybe he has a motive. Maybe if he can create a cool enough climate, maybe he can slip into someone’s hip pocket. It is January, after all.
Let’s test the waters. Let’s have him throw an arm over that lumpy thing beside him and see if there’s any reaction.
There’s a reaction, all right. In a king-sized bed, someone who is already three feet away can make it four with a simple roll-over. Lumpy thing has just indicated she will be driving in her own lane – alone.
So, thanks, January. Men of a certain age have enough trouble generating interest in snuggling to begin with. The least you could do is let it be cold enough that her very survival depends on her dancing cheek-to-cheek with me.
Not happening. She just got up to turn on the ceiling fan.
Good. I’m hot, too.
To Cuba With Love
Fidel Castro is dead. One down, one to go.
That is, one Castro down, one more to go.
That is the clear message I got from visiting Cuba four years ago.
I consider myself a lucky man. I went to Cuba before the United States offered an olive branch to that little island. So, I got to see ‘old’ Cuba. The Cuba in ruins. The Cuba in need.
But it was a Cuba with hope. Hope that one day America would show them some love, and hope that one day, they could participate in their governance. That would mean life without the Castros.
For clarity on my visit, it was part of a larger tour that was visiting for the purpose of seeing agriculture in that county.
It was weird from the get-go. First of all, flying to Cuba from Miami, we didn’t do normal customs. Best I recall, we went to a terminal where things were handled differently. Bags weren’t inspected, and aside from previously filled-out paperwork, questions weren’t asked.
What I didn’t know is that Cubans with relatives in the States can fly back and forth pretty easily, if they can afford to. And leaving the U.S., Cubans could take things, like TVs or toasters, back to Cuba on those flights.
In fact, knowing Cuba was the land of rum – and I am not a rum man – I packed two ‘handles’ of bourbon in my bag. That’s two 1.5 liter bottles.
Arriving in Cuba, there are occasional random inspections. Had I been picked out, it would be interesting to see if they cared that I carried basically a gallon of bourbon.
In the Havana airport, I immediately encountered what would become a bit of a Cuban signature: begging. At the entrance to the restroom in the airport were two lovely, young ladies, clearly waiting for a ‘tip.’
Not knowing how to handle the situation, I gave one of them a dollar. The other smiled, and said, “Nothing for me?”
I obliged.
And on that note, I want to introduce you to the people of Cuba that I encountered.
There is so much to say about how, 50 years ago, Cuba’s leadership ‘sided’ with Russia and adopted communism, and how Russia later left them hanging when Russia itself was undergoing massive changes.
But that’s a whole lot of history lessons I didn’t learn.
So, this is about the Cuban people I saw and met, filtered, of course, through my own lenses.
Cubans so badly want to be friends with you. You, Americans. They want a relationship with us. They want the life we have. They want to be happy. They’ve smuggled their families to our shores for the last 50 years to get away from the nothingness they’ve had under the Castros.
Most of them only know communism as a failed ideology. They hate it.
They want the dream.
Under communism, they are paid wages set by ‘the state,’ and they know there’s something better. They know that in America, there’s the possibility of being paid for what you know and how you perform.
They know that in America, food is not rationed. It is in Cuba. I didn’t know that.
Begging is rampant in Cuba. But I quickly learned that begging pays better. If an average Cuban can get one dollar from a visitor, that’s a better day’s wages than they would be paid by the state.
So why would you not beg?
Our guide was an attorney that hadn’t practiced law in six years, because tips from being a tour guide paid better. Doctors act as taxi drivers on their days off because of the money they could make on tips.
Why would you not beg?
Some Cubans try to be creative in their panhandling. They dress up in old plantation-style costumes and hope you’ll want a picture with them. A tip is expected.
In need of a restroom on day, I approached a group of young men and asked where I might find one. They eagerly showed me the way, then asked for money for helping me. One even went down on his knees, begging.
I recall a gentleman following our group for a few moments, singing songs and playing a guitar. He cursed us when we didn’t tip him. It’s not that we didn’t like him or his singing, but there were so many people looking for a handout. It wears on you after a while.
Beggars were like flies around tour buses. Some looked very pitiful and were hard to ignore, but once you saw them there every day, you understood the routine.
Havana was romantic. You’re in Havana, Cuba, for heaven’s sake! The land of mobsters and Frank Sinatra. Redundant, I know.
Much of the city was in tatters. Scaffolding everywhere and not a lot of work was being done.
“They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.” It’s an old, familiar joke Cubans like to tell. Except it’s not really a joke. They get paid the same wage for working on a job or standing around doing nothing. Best I could tell, they generally chose to do the latter.
What struck me was how easily they spoke of communism, of their government, of their distaste for the Castros, Fidel and Raul. But mostly, of how they looked forward to a Cuba without them.
The Cuba I saw was the old Cuba. The one that got stuck in time when Fidel Castro thumbed his nose at the U.S. He had climbed into bed the Russians, and it turns out they didn’t pay for sex.
The Cuba I saw was pretty much the same as it was 50 years ago. In our ‘nice’ hotel, bare wires dangled from sockets, and the bed linens were straight out of your great-grandmother's closet.
You see pictures of the old ‘50s and ‘60s cars in Cuba. That because there’s not much else. And they keep those cars in such pristine condition because you will pay cash to have them shuttle you around in them.
There’s a whole lot of bondo and rubber bands holding those things together. They have precious little access to parts.
Arriving back in the States, we actually did go through security.
“Do you have any tobacco?”
“No,” I answered.
“Any alcohol?”
“No.”
Of course, I had both. Almost everyone had Cuban cigars and rum.
Turns out, this particular ‘American’ border agent was a native Cuban. Rather than concern himself about cigars and rum, he used our time together to lecture me on how relations between our countries “must” normalize. “Cubans,” he said, “want to be included.”
I knew what he meant.
When President Obama opened the freezer door and started thawing out relations with Cuba, I watched with interest the reactions here at home. Many old-timers, including Cuban ex-patriots and others with direct ties to Cuba want us to have nothing to do with Cuba until the Castros are gone.
They are other voices, of course, that want normalized relations. I am among them.
I am among them, because I met a lot of Cuban people that had nothing to do with the politics of their country. They are our neighbors. They want to be our friends. I hope that happens one day.
Maybe with Fidel Castro’s passing, we got a little closer to that.
Say Cheese!
Over breakfast, my wife accused me of being unable to eat scrambled eggs without cheese. Rather than starting a nasty spat, I played the bigger man and conceded this one.
For starters, cheese is the perfect food. That aside, however, I don’t do simply scrambled eggs and cheese, I do ‘cheggs.’ Cheese with some egg in it.
On the morning in question, however, there were more than just eggs with cheese. I was also serving grits with cheese and toast with cream cheese.
Cheese on everything?
Hardly. The bacon was naked.
There’s an art to cooking with cheese. If you simply throw cheddar on every dish, you are going to be considered an unsophisticated rube. Ignore the haters. While this is elementary ‘cooking with cheese,’ you’re on the right track and should be proud of yourself.
You can never go wrong with cheddar on about anything. In fact, my rule of thumb is, if that dish is going into the oven, it can handle some cheddar. Including, but not limited to, apple pie!
I want you to get to know your cheeses and experiment some, so let’s cover the basic categories:
-String Cheese. What you serve your kids to make them shut up. And to start them on their way to coronary disease later in life.
-Easy Cheesy. These are easy-eating, everyday cheeses: mozzarella, Monterey Jack, etc. (Fresh moz should have its own category: cheese with no flavor, but there’s not enough time here to cover everything.) Easy cheesy is cheese that don’t stink.
-Stanky Cheese. Cheese that do stink. This includes your blue – or bleu – cheese, gorgonzola, and others, like limburger, which you may never be exposed to. Stanky cheese is my favorite category.
Hard Cheese: Parmesan
Melty Cheese. Think fondue cheeses, like Gruyere, queso, Velveeta and chocolate.
Some will say because Velveeta is ‘cheese food,’ it’s not real cheese. Cheese is food, so hush up, and let’s move on.
I do recognize that chocolate is not technically cheese, but given that milk is the number one ingredient in both cheese and chocolate, and both make outstanding fondue, I thought it deserved inclusion.
Notice how cheddar is not in any category. That’s because, depending on the age of it, cheddar can fit into almost all categories. And that’s why everything’s bettah with cheddah.
Unless you use mild cheddar, in which case you’re just being a sissy.
Now, go cut some cheese.
The Great Lemonade Heist
I’m a sucker for a kids’ lemonade stand. The lemonade stand is a ritual of childhood, and I usually don’t pass one up.
Not only will I buy their lemonade, I’ll make sure the kids make a little money.
“How much? A quarter? Well, I only have this dollar bill, but you just keep the change. Having this cold lemonade on such a hot day is worth it!”
Something like that.
I pulled into my friend’s driveway as her kids were setting up shop on the side of their neighborhood street. I had gone there to talk a little business, unaware that this other business was in its start-up stage.
A sign was being made and a table was being set up. Lemonade was being prepared by other children in another house. This was going to be big. In all, five or six kids were involved in this operation. A real citrus syndicate.
My friend’s oldest son was making the plywood sign. He was struggling with the spelling of ‘lemonade,’ but I could see that, as usual, a cup of cool refreshment would be a quarter. Some things never change.
Our conversation was interrupted by her 6-year old son.
“We’re going to tell them it’s a quarter, but if they don’t have a quarter, we’re just going to give them some, anyway.”
His mom hugged him and said, “Of course you are, because it’s the right thing to do.” She kissed him on the top of his head.
It was a sweet gesture, but the capitalist in me bristled. Lemonade is not expensive, but it’s not free. The table you dragged out of the garage, the plywood for the sign, the markers used to letter the sign, the pitcher from which the lemonade will be poured… all bought and paid for at some point in the past.
I held my tongue and smiled. It was a sweet gesture. And it didn’t surprise me. This is a very open family with very liberal values, and I would have expected nothing less.
Still, I wanted to grab both mother and son by their collective collars and holler. “Nothing is free! You hear me? It may be free to you, but somewhere, somehow, somebody paid for it!”
But I knew I’d be back. “Text me when the stand is open for business,” I told her as I left.
An hour later, my phone dinged. I had a few errands to run, so dropping by to support the team was happily added to the agenda.
On the way over, I hatched my plan for helping them. In the truck with me I had a larger cup, and I would ask them to fill it up. That would be more than a standard cup, and I’d simply give them a dollar for their trouble.
Trouble began as soon as I pulled up.
“What happened here?!”
The mom laughed. “There’s bit a bit of inflation since you left.”
I’ll say. Spray paint has been used as Wite Out, and a cup of lemonade was now up 300% to a dollar!
Furthermore, her feisty 4-year old red-headed girl-child that never – never – speaks to me had decided to break her silence. “If you don’t give me a dollar, you won’t get any lemonade.”
Extortion as a sales pitch. Clever.
Imagine going to buy a car and being told, “If you don’t give me $30,000, I’m not going to give you a new car.”
Then, to top it all off, the little socialist who was perfectly willing to give away his product brings me half a cup. A paper cup, half full.
In my case, half empty. I had to give him another dollar to fill it up.
There’s a lesson here, and I’m not sure what it is. But I think I’ve figured out how Bernie Sanders was able to buy a $600,000 summer house after he dropped out of the 2016 presidential race.